Americans are not fond of conspiracy theories. They make good movie devices, but most Americans take things at face value. In fact, people who promote conspiracy theories tend to be written off as kooks. The 9/11 Truthers and the Birthers are two notable examples. Franklin was right when he said that “three can keep a secret if two are dead.” The entirety of our news business relies on blabber-mouths telling tales out of school. People simply cannot keep secrets.

But, that does not mean there are no conspiracies. The other day Steve Sailer connected the dots between the authoress of the infamous Rolling Stone story and Stephen Glass, the fabulist who duped the Left many years ago. Sabrina Erdly was a classmate of Glass and she wrote a glowing article about him. That connection says nothing about the veracity of her claims, but it adds a nice bit of color. Erdly is not someone who thinks fabricating stories is a bad thing.

Here’s where things get interesting. One of Erdly’s sources for her tale, is a woman named Emily Renda. She is a UVA grad who brought the alleged victim to the attention of Erdly so she could write about her. It turns out that Renda was not just a concerned citizen. She was working for the White House and was part of the Administration’s new crusade to end the alleged rape culture on campus.

University alumna Emily Renda, who worked with the White House Task Force last spring and interns in the University Office of Student Affairs, said the new campaign will change the language used to discuss sexual assault prevention.

“Men weren’t particularly engaged with sexual violence prevention because the only thing we were really pushing as part of [it] was ‘don’t rape people,’ which is not exactly a very proactive thing to tell people to do,” Renda said. “The language is starting to shift more to healthy conversations about healthy sexuality and consent, and having those for both men and women as kind of an engagement point.”

Renda said the changed approach will involve men who have felt alienated and broadly characterized as perpetrators of sexual violence, as well as women who have felt alienated and broadly characterized as victims.

“This campaign and the stuff that U.Va. is already doing, is irrespective of gender saying ‘it is, in fact, our responsibility just as individuals and humans, regardless of our gender,’” she said. “It’s a lot about pulling back on the victim-perpetrator dichotomy we were using before.”

“It’s On Us” follows the path of University initiatives like “Hoos Got Your Back” and “Not On Our Grounds” in stressing the importance of bystander education and intervention against sexual assault.

“We intended for ‘Hoos Got Your Back’ to be an introduction to bystander [intervention], and to raise awareness for how important bystanders can be in fighting sexual misconduct,” Eramo said. “We kind of considered it our first step, and our next step is working on developing and implementing some training programs for students, so I think you’ll see more of that coming towards the end of this semester and into the spring semester.”

“It’s On Us” will work alongside the University’s sexual assault awareness groups to empower the initiative on Grounds.

“What [“It’s On Us”] will hopefully do is augment the messaging we already have,” Renda said. “The hope is that “It’s On Us” can … be some sort of sub-campaign within [the] broader, more University specific [groups], because we want to keep the language that’s relevant to our community, while still looking into the national prevention effort.”

So, we have the White House, as part of its political strategy, pushing the bogus rape culture stuff. We have a member of the administration feeding a bogus story to a social justice warrior, who dutifully writes a highly fictionalized version for a progressive website known for its click-bait journalism.

Now that’s a conspiracy you can sink your teeth into!

Last week I posted something about the University of Virginia rape “scandal.”  I was not buying it and it now looks like I was right. Not that anyone should be surprised that I was right. That should be your default position. I’m a little surprised that I was so incredibly right. I said it “reads like what liberals imagine happens in the rape culture of fraternities.” Reality is rarely so neat and tidy like it is depicted on TV or in pulp fiction aimed at women. Steve Sailer did an excellent literary critique of the story the other day.

Anyway, the magazine is now running away from their story. The fraternity is about release facts that contradict key parts of the story. Getting details here or there wrong would be one thing, but we’re now learning that large chunks of the story are complete nonsense. Apparently, the young girl in question has been massaging this story for years, embellishing it as she goes, to the point where even her friends think she is a nut.

I do wonder if this will be a tipping point for this stuff. There’s a limit to how many times you can cry wolf. When you get highly memorable whoppers like this and the Duke lacrosse case, they tend to stick in people’s minds. When the next one comes up it gets easier to recall these hoaxes. It also makes it easier to recall the lesser hoaxes as they string together like beads on a string.

Unsaid in all of this is what it means for the Progressive coalition. The war on women stuff was a huge flop in the election. This stuff does not help the cause. It just makes appeals to lady part solidarity sound ridiculous, even to young women. With everyone re-thinking race relations in light of Ferguson, the progressive coalition is looking like it is about to collapse. Time will tell, but it looks like the late-70’s all of a sudden.

Way back before writing was common, there was a young black politician coming along who was ticketed for big things. The FDR-New Deal coalition was in tatters and the Reagan Revolution was in full swing. Catholics, the so-called Reagan Democrats, were walking away from the Liberal Democrats. Southern whites were heading for the exits. In both cases the underlying issue was race. The Civil Rights Movement turned into looting and retribution, busting up the old coalition that had made the Democrats the majority part for 50 years.

In the midst of what looked like a collapse of the American Left, the search was on for “new” Democrats. The Democratic Leadership Council was founded in ’85 with the goal of reforming the party and unloading the old commies and radicals that scared the hell out of decent people. The search was also on for new black leaders. Lunatics like Jesse Jackson were embarrassing and reminded whites of what went wrong with the Civil Rights Movement. That’s how Kurt Schmoke got his start in politics.

Instead of being a man of the streets, Schmoke was a man from the Ivy League. On paper he looked like the ideal black guy. He was smart, well spoken and civilized. He avoided all the bomb throwing that other black politicians could never seem to resist. Schmoke was a black politician who could go toe-to-toe with the white guys in the board room and the classroom. He was guided into elected office by the Maryland Democratic machine and eventually became mayor of Baltimore.

I recall being at a reception of some sort where Schmoke was ushered around by some big shot Democrats. The buzz about the guy was thick. He was going to be the first black governor and maybe the first black president. Instead he was mayor and never went any further in politics. He entered office as a technocrat who would make the city work. His first was uneventful, but it was clear he was not up to the task of fixing the city. By his second term it was typical black city politics. The pols were looting the treasury and the city services were declining. The people were also fleeing in droves.

The interesting thing about Schmoke, and the only reason I bothered to keep up with his career, is he could never resist the pull of black racial solidarity. By his final term in office, he was dressed like an African potentate. He was sporting a kufi and dashiki. At one point he was flying the ANC flag at City Hall. Gone was all the talk of sitting with the white man as an equal. It was all black power and separatism. He even hired the Nation of Islam for security.

As Obama came along I was reminded of old Kurt Schmoke. The pitch was a bit different as the Cult was ascendent, rather than in decline. Back in the 80’s they were hoping to stave off collapse. In the 2000’s they were talking about realignment and making the Right a fringe operation. Instead of being a clean articulate black guy who would not scare the whites, Obama was a clean articulate black guy who would scare the whites. That’s largely been true, but Obama seems to be following the same path as Schmoke at the end of his time. Today Obama held a hate whitey festival at the White House. He invited all of the usual toothaches from the racial grievance industry.

The decent thing to do now is to let the whole Ferguson matter fade into the past. Race relations is about keeping the peace. That’s it. There will never be a colorblind society. If Obama cared a whit about improving race relations he’d be out front in closing the book on the whole thing. Instead he seems hell bent on causing blacks to riot nationwide. Like old Kurt Schmoke decades ago, he is embracing his Afro side with a vengeance and will spend the remainder of his term inflicting exactly that, vengeance.

This reminds me of something else from the old days. Obama’s sponsors, Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, were attracted to radical politics because they thought it upset the squares. In their Weather Underground days, they set out to do exactly that. The point of their terrorism was no point at all. They just liked mayhem. That’s what Obama’s Hate Whitey Day looks like. It’s just a way to cause trouble for no good reason. Bourgeois radicalism is just an extended tantrum against the peace and prosperity of the adults.

One final thought. I’m struck by the reaction of whites to all of this. When it comes to race, it has been a long time since whites have spoke forthrightly about the subject in public. On-line and on television I’m seeing some tough words about black crime, black racism and the general dysfunction of black America. That used to be the sort of thing that got you banished to Steve Sailer’s basement. In private, I’m hearing white people speak in ways that would have made Archie Bunker blush.  If blacks had the capacity to self-police, they would be wise to muffle their bomb-throwers now and let all this settle down.